Jane's Walk

Jane Walk 2011 set for May 7 & 8

Jane’s Walk is a thriving Canadian innovation that has gone global. In 2011 Jane's Walk will roll into more cities and towns than ever before on May 7 & 8 - the closest weekend to Jane Jacobs birthday on May 4. Celebrating the legacy of Jane Jacobs, the foremost urban thinker of recent times, Jane’s Walks inspire citizens to get to know their city and each other by getting out and walking. Jacobs famously declared that walkable, diverse and mixed used neighborhoods are the hallmark of a healthy city and its people.

In 2010 Jane's Walks spanned 68 cities worldwide (29 in Canada, 32 in the U.S, 7 internationally) with 418 walking tours on offer. New Jane’s Walk events were held in such cities as Los Angeles, San Juan Puerto Rico, Seattle, Chattanooga, Saskatoon, Edmonton, Sault Ste Marie, Kamloops, Victoria. And Jane’s Walk expanded internationally with walks held in La Paloma Uruguay, Goa & Mumbai India, Dublin Ireland, Lusaka Zambia and Madrid Spain.

“For Jane Jacobs, the best way to get to know the city and the neighbours was on foot,” says Jane Farrow, executive director of Jane’s Walk. “Jacobs encouraged everyone to just get out and look around, to walk the sidewalks and talk about what they thought needed to happen to make their neighbourhood better.”

“When it comes to improving their own neighbourhoods, people are often isolated or unaware of others who may share their interests,” Farrow adds. “Jane’s Walk helps bridge these gaps and encourages people to gain new perspectives on the sidewalks they use for the basic tasks of daily life – tasks like shopping, getting to school and work.”

Volunteer tour guides, ranging from aspiring municipal candidates to urban planners to recent immigrants and high school students, customize their tours with personal stories, local perspectives and insider hideaways to help bridge social and geographic gaps and create a space for cities to discover themselves.

Organizers of Jane’s Walk are offered free support and advice about how to program and publicize the event. Local partners get free web support, tip sheets, poster and publicity templates and access to an on-line forum where they meet and chat with other organizers, getting insider tips and best practices. Some Jane’s Walks are quickly organized in less than a week – it’s as simple as telling folks where to meet and hosting a walking conversation with other interested residents and visitors. In other places Jane’s Walk is planned for months by a range of committed volunteers who program dozens of walks and promote them widely.

Whatever scope the local organizers decide on, Jane's Walk has quickly become a powerful and adaptable vehicle for bringing people together to express their hopes and insights for livable and resilient places to live and work. As one organizer enthused "Jane's Walk is an interesting, easy and effective engagement tool -- simple ask, no cost, big response from community. People were thrilled that hundreds of others were taking part in the walks across Canada."

Jane Jacobs' eye was always at ground level, and she felt strongly that no grand planning scheme could substitute for an understanding of people's everyday experience of the city. For her, the best way to get to know parks, sidewalks and streets was to get out and walk around, especially with some local residents. First published in 1961, Jane Jacobs' classic book The Death and Life of the Great American Cities was based on the day-to-day observation of street life in diverse city neighbourhoods. Jane's Walk invites city-dwellers to get out of their cars and get connected, to strike up a conversation, and keep it going after the walk over a coffee, on the sidewalk, or sharing a seat on transit.